


Being an excerpt from an ongoing saga

by cupiscent



Category: Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-23
Updated: 2008-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment from a relationship in isolation; Gabe's obnoxious, but he still has the most comfortable lap in the room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being an excerpt from an ongoing saga

**Author's Note:**

> For and because of [](http://airgiodslv.livejournal.com/profile)[**airgiodslv**](http://airgiodslv.livejournal.com/). Despite the title, this is stand-alone and complete. (Sorry.)

...nothing very much, but afterwards, **(1)** a congregation just seemed to occur naturally around the coffee machine in the lounge of the hotel they'd actually been put up in for once, God bless Australia and all its works. It was a gathering Gabe would insist to anyone who'd sit still to hear it that he had instigated, or at least been in on the ground floor of, since he'd been sitting in the corner of the couch near the window reading the newspaper (the last time he'd actually known what was going on in the world was Baltimore, or maybe Gerrit, if that was even a place and not something he imagined) though he'd flipped it over to the sports - not that he even _understood_ the sports - when Vicky and Nate came in. Sisky and the Butcher came in a bit later with a case of beer and after that it grew a little hazy, but he was pretty sure there was an oscillating cast of half of Panic and a pair of random girls the provenance of whom was uncertain but Gabe would Have Words with them if he found out who was responsible for them and their incessant, irritating giggling.

The first Gabe knew that William had made it back from whatever wilderness he'd been trekking that afternoon was denim-clad legs in his field of vision sparking enough recognition that the smack against his arm didn't spill any of his beer. "What?" Gabe yelped and, "Budge up," Bill commanded, but by the time Gabe was saying, "There's no fucking up to budge," he was already throwing his lanky-ass frame down on the rest of the couch, feet up on the arm and his head slotting in between Gabe's elbow and his thigh like this was the space in the universe designed for it. Gabe lifted his beer out of the way to give more room to his affronted look, because it seemed to be having no effect on William's placid repose.

"You may be an obnoxious cunt," Bill said, "but you've still got the most comfortable lap in the room." He tilted his neck, frowned, and added, "Stop wriggling about."

Guilty on all fronts, and though the main charge was one that could be laid with feasibility at Gabe's feet more or less any day of the week, **(2)** the specific cuntery in question on this occasion went something like this:

>   
> **G Saporta**  
> did u do that thing?
> 
> **Billvy**  
> What fucking thing?
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> thing w the gear
> 
> **Billvy**  
> I said no.
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> i said u should
> 
> **Billvy**  
> And I said no and it's 4 in the fucking morning and I hate you.
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> what u doing baby?
> 
> **Billvy**  
> TURNING MY CELL OFF.
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> no u wont u luv me
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> LOVE ME
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> u totally do
> 
> **G Saporta**  
> bill?

But Gabe isn't sure that should actually count because he didn't send Bill photos of himself being bored in his room at four-thirty in the morning like he was seriously considering he should _or_ go up and hammer on his door though that was possibly only because he couldn't remember which room William was in and the guy at reception wouldn't tell him. Fucker. But for that restraint alone, at least with the pictures, surely he deserves more than **(3)** Bill _falling asleep_ in his lap somewhere between Gabe clapping along to the game of pizza-box limbo and the point where he was having a serious discussion (_serious_) with Ryland about whether smurfs have hair and Vicky popped up behind Ry and started giggling and pointing at Gabe which it turned out (this time) was because William was dead to the world with his cheek smeared across Gabe's thigh.

"It's so cute," she crooned, and started laughing again.

"Come now, Vicks," Ryland declaimed, quietly but with that breed of straight face that meant he was laughing at Gabe, as per fucking usual, "ours is not to judge."

They fucked off shortly after Gabe invited them to do so, which turned out to be a bit of a problem because he hadn't realised until then that the party had become rather thin. In fact, there was only a small knot of assorted bandmembers and crew outside the windows, shrieking and blowing cigarette smoke at the night sky. In their midst Gabe could see Alex telling the story about the bus window and getting it dead fucking wrong, like usual, but he was stuck between a rock (called the arm of the couch) and William Beckett and there was no way out.

Unless he tipped Bill off. He didn't want to tip Bill off. He had his hair falling far too short over his face, not covering nearly as much as it should of his cheekbone and the shadow beneath his closed eye that couldn't be blamed on his eyelashes. Jetlag was kicking everyone's ass. Gabe just didn't show it as much because he'd never chosen to confrom to regular waking and sleeping hours anyway.

He sat, and he thought about lyrics, and chord progressions, and things he should tell people, and eventually he nodded off with his head tipped back against the wall and **(4)** woke with fingers, long fingers, spider fingers, upon his face. The night was eternally dark beyond the windows of the lounge that was eternally light and there wasn't another breathing soul in sight except William Beckett, tilted up off Gabe's lap with his fingertips scraping down the five o'clock (in the morning) shadow on Gabe's cheek with one corner of his mouth quirking towards delight and his eyes wide, dark, the most compelling fucking thing in the vicinity.

"Well thank fucking christ," Gabe managed, before Billvy kissed him.

He did it arching up, so it was like something springing unexpectedly upon him, like being mugged by a squirrel, like lurching into him on an uneven sidewalk. Gabe's hand came up to catch the back of his neck without him even thinking about it, because they were friends, right? and friends steadied each other when their hearts were hammering and this was hardly unknown but completely unmapped. Bill's fingers pushed into the short hair at the back of Gabe's head, spreading insidiously across his skull and pulling him closer, into Bill's mouth, against his tongue pushed against Gabe's, into a tangle that Gabe was faintly, sickeningly, euphorically sure he'd never be free of.

He did it arching up, so he was stretched across Gabe's lap with his back curved like an invitation and his stomach clenched and Gabe wanted to know what it felt like, so he pushed his hand - the one that wasn't cradled around the back of William's neck - up beneath his shirt and...


End file.
